The Impact of Sundown Towns on African American Movements

The Impact of Sundown Towns on African American Movements
“Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you…” (Loewen 3) American communities characterized by their exclusivity to white Americans and intolerance of races they deemed inferior. Communities where extreme prejudice, racism, and violence were practiced and encouraged towards those inferior races. Sundown Towns, a practice birthed over a century ago, where inhabitants of certain southern American communities where purposefully predominantly white. (Esquibel 1) Whole counties were governed by the idea that any ethnic minority person found out-of-doors after sundown was fair prey for horrific brutality. It was these practices that lead people to intolerance, therefore sparking African American civil rights movements.
The principals of Segregation sewn into black communities during the years of oppression bred in African Americans a sense of inequality. The breeding of inequality was the point of Segregation. (O’Connell 314) Since the time of American abolition, however, African American populations had experienced an uplifting of social rights understandings. By the mid-1970s, although brutal practices including killings of minority groups had continued, younger and higher educated Black populations saw the ideals and practices of Sundown Towns as inherently inhumane, ultimately using events as fuel for the civil rights movement then initiated. Civil rights groups such as the Black Panthers used the flippant attitudes of Sundown Town inhabitants towards their heinous and violent crimes as ammunition in recruiting supporters and justifying their acts of malicious prejudice.
Sundown Towns were gross abuses of lingering perceived power of white Americans against Black. Their goal was to further feelings of hatred within inhabitants, perpetrating monstrous acts under the guise of divine superiority and tradition. It was these acts, however, that motivated many African Americans to action, changing American society forever. Although official Sundown Towns have been outlawed many groups and organization still hold fast to the ideals of superiority. These festering attitudes have resulted in many injustices against both Black and White races. In the face of such turmoil, is it plausible to assume that there may be a new civil rights movement on the horizon?